[wtallis]

> I naively assumed that the headlines saying that Intel was behind in process technology were correct, and used that to inform purchasing decisions.

Those headlines are correct, and were at the time this article was written as well. Intel's first 10nm process was completely broken, and their current less-dense 10nm process is still barely usable. Any density advantages Intel was planning on their 10nm having over TSMC 7nm are meaningless at this point. Higher density is pointless unless you can get yields that are good enough to ship chips that are meaningfully better on power, performance and price.

[lorenzhs]

It's not "barely usable" any more, they're shipping Xeons with up to 40 cores at volume. Afaik everything except high-clock desktop parts is shipping on 10nm now. It took them an eternity, but it's not Duke Nukem late.

[wtallis]

Those Xeons only make sense if you're able to make very good use of AVX-512 or if you're bureaucratically prevented from buying AMD. They aren't a disaster to the extent that Cannonlake was, but it's still a product that has trouble standing on its merits and is shipping in part because Intel couldn't have cancelled it and told customers to wait for Sapphire Rapids without facing a shareholder lawsuit for lying about the viability of their roadmap.

[lorenzhs]

You're moving the goalposts. After being delayed numerous times and the first parts being of rather questionable usefulness, Intel's 10nm process is doing fine now and shipping in volume. Noone claimed that they had closed the gap to AMD with the 10nm Xeons, only that they're shipping. (They also significantly narrowed the gap, but it remains quite large).